ALWAYS A CRISIS

Evening Star, Issue 19793, 17 February 1928, Page 6

ALWAYS A CRISIS

CIVILISATION'S ETERNAL PROBLEMS “ The art of living with other people ” is the description given of tho lessons taught in Frincipal L. P. Jacks’s new book, ‘Constructive Citizenship,’ and it is rightly described, says ‘Public Opinion,’ as “a groat contribution to social philosophy.” Last winter Principal Jacks gave the course of Steveiuon Lectures on Citizenship at tho University of Glasgow, and in this volume they are reprinted. They have, of course, been subjected to the alterations necessary and usual in such a case. Much which exigencies of time caused to be omitted has been included, and the matter has to some extent been rearranged. On tins account the lectures can be read with profit oven by those who had the privilege of hearing them. Tho following quotation is from tho lecture on ‘ Social Valor ’;—

“In dealing with the tendency of our time to give the conception of social disease a dominating place in political thought,” Dr L. V. Jacks says, “the citizen is not, primarily, a doctor of his neighbors’ ills; no feebler conception could be given of his vocation, of his rights and duties, than that which encourages him to think so. Yet who will deny that this conception is widely prevalent among the social operators’ of the present day; and who can fail to see that wasteful strife is the inevitable consequence of it—the strife between those, on the one hand, who are ambitious to play the part of doctors, and those, on the other, who will fight to the last ditch rather than bo treated as patients by tyrants masquerading as physicians. “The essential point, lost sight of in this controversy between would-be doctors and wouid-not-be patients, is the dangerousness of the enterprise in which all the citizens are engaged together. Our civilisation has now reached a point of advance which measures the degree of its peril, when its survival depends on the willingness of the masses of the citizens in all nations to stand loyally together as comrades in a great adventure, ‘ one equal temper of heroic hearts ’ inspiring them. The League of Nations is the symbol of that outstanding fact. “ Co-operation, both world-wide and world-deep, lias become the supreme necessity of the present age, the ‘ downfall ’ of civilisation being simply the alternative to that. There is no ‘ party,’ however strong, there is no ‘ ism,’ however enlightened, that can bear the burden and direct the fortunes of the modern world, or of any great nation within it. To meet these conditions something more is needed than social science, something more than ability to diagnose and to treat the maladies of the body politic. “Valor is needed, valor on an immense scale, valor with a united front bound together in mutual loyalty, and so made world-deep as well as worldwide. The ‘ progress ’ of civilisation does not consist, as some would have it, in gradual advance to the point of safety. It consists much rather in a grooving perception of the common risk and the growing willingness to face it together. The unity of civilisation is the unity of that high resolve. “ I would urge you to beware of social doctrines, and of religious doctrines, too, for there are such, which obscure the necessity of high courage, individual and collective. 1 would urge you to interpret the duties of your citizenship, primarily and essentially, as the duties of men and women who are called upon to make a valiant contribution to the work of their generation, by taking their share in the dangers and sufferings of the common Cnter-

prise as well as in the fruits and the profits of it.

“ Bo prepared, 1 would say, for high demands on your courage, your resolution, and your skill. Except as the valiant spirit inspires it constructive .citizenship is nothing at ail. Let the Haloing of the citizen, in all its stages, bo conceived of accordingly.

“ A large measure of danger is inseparable from the good life, whether in the social or the individual form. The good life, in either form, is _ not merely difficult (as Aristotle insisted it must be) in the sense that it means hard work, but difficulty in tho deeper souse also that it means hard lighting, with the possibility of frustration and defeat always at iiand. From the point of view of those who value most their happiness or their skins the good life cannot bo described as ‘ safe ’ either for individual or for societies. By its very nature it is dangerous. Nietzsche’s revolt against the current morality of his time seems to me, in this respect, to be fully justified, and it remains to be carried into the domain of social ethics.

“The dangers of the gpod life are to be reckoned evils only when we allow them to alarm ns unduly or when wo run away from them. A condition that we may justly call diseased is created whenever the dangers frighten us into distraction and deprive us of our resolution and self-mastery—for fear is a disease of the human soul and never so deadly as when the soul of a. community becomes infected by

“ Civilisation is always lacing a crisis,” states Ur L. P. Jacks towards the conclusion of his chapter; “always has done so; always will do so; in which respect it resembles religion. Civilisation, like religion, maintains its values only so long as the valor of mankind responds to the growing tensions of an evolving world; for there is a connection, deeper than etymology, between the values that are in the universe and the valor that is in the soul. “ By no conceivable ‘ measures,’ remedial or otherwise, can civilised society attain a position where it can ‘ dig itself in ’ under conditions of perfect safety. ‘ Dug in ’ under any conditions whatsoever, the fibre of the race would inevitably decay, and the pleasanter the stagnation was, the more swiftly would time turn it to putrefaction. Nor do 1 the stagnant civilisations of the East,’ which are not all as ‘ stagnant ’ as they appear to be on the surface, prove anything to the contrary. “ ‘ Safetv ’ and ‘ progress ’ arc illassorted ideas. What a progressive society has to expect is not a gradual diminution of the forces that oppose its 1 happiness * or its ‘ welfare * until notiling remains to endanger them, but an increase in the opposition proportioned to the value of the ‘ happiness ’ or the ‘ welfare ’ attained. “ It should never be forgotten that the same ‘law of evolution’ which carries the best to higher levels operates in like manner on the second best; and the second best, as everybody knows, is always the most active opponent ot the best, the opposition of the ‘worst’ being a trifle in comparison. And, besides all that, the life of a progressive society exposes itself at every stop of its advance to the impact of new forces, not under the control of man, which have their origin in the unfathomable depths of the universe; not under his control, and yet capable of being converted by his valor into forces that work on his side. Again, involved in these conditions, there is the ever-present dang6r, inseparable from the nature of man as a free agent, inseparable from the drama of history as free agents must always play it, that traitors may bo found in the camp. “The richer society becomes in goods material and spiritual, the more difficult it is to ensure their just distribution and the easier for the thief to capture them under the plea that when once they are his he will ‘ distribute ’ them justly. Along with this growing appeal to the predatory instincts of human nature there goes a parallel development in the art of sophistry, whereby the spoiler, when accused by his conscience of his fellow-men, can always disguise his motives from himself and from others under the cloak of an ethical terminology. I reckon this among the subtlest and not the least deadly of the perils an advance civilisation has to face. “ For ease and happiness, whatever value they may otherwisq r posscss, are not the conditions of unity in human life; as objects of desire they are active sources of division; and, though it is conceivable that a weak and devitalised society might concentrate what strength it had on the ‘production! of these pleasant commodities, the ‘ distribu-

tion ’ of them would inevitably produce discord. Wo have uo means for measuring tho exact values of of our own ‘ happiness ’ or of our neighbors, and none, therefore, of ascertaining whether our portion of it is ‘equitable ’ in relation to theirs. “ Indeed, if we are seeking lor a ground on which civilisation could unite, tho common endurance of pain would serve the purpose better than the common enjoyment of pleasure. The former appeals to what is strong and steadfast in human nature, the latter to what is weak and unstable. Moreover, we may be well assured that until tlio world' ends, or suffering and death are abolished meanwhile, the common endurance of pain, which is another name for the bearing of one another’s burdens, will bo a necessary element in the social ideal. At every stage of human progress, low or high, the willingness of men to suffer together remains the indispensable condition of being glorified together. “The silly cult of happiness, which still keeps a hold on the general mind, unshaken by philosophical exposure, and turns whoever takes it in earnest into an imbecile or a nuisance, obscures all this. Among the products of a sickly idealism none is more repulsive than the picture of human destiny as a universal ‘ soft job ’ with ‘ happiness ’ evenly distributed by the automatic equity of a social system. The unity of civilisation does not lie in that direction. “Tho ‘job’ that awaits the human race is a hard one, and destined to become continuously harder as the ages advance. The only ‘ unity ’ which civilisation can ever attain is the unity which springs from a clear perception of the dangers and difficulties of the common task backed by a common resolution to get the work done with the utmost excellence it admits of. “Of all the truths our generation needs to learn I know of none more urgent.than this. I would make it basic in the training of the citizen.” The lectures are virile, and many besides the big audiences who heard them in Glasgow will be glad to have' them in book form.